To the creationists - the tough question

"When God finished after 6 days, he declared everything was very good (Gen 1:31). The actual Hebrew word used is perfection."Would then someone explain to me why Adam and Eve ate the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil,they suddently felt that being naked was evil and covered their private parts with Fig leaves if God had allready identified being naked (the state Adam was in at the end of the 6th day) as "very Good...i.e. perfection"? The fruit gave them God's knowledge of good and evil and since God did not consider nakedness evil,why would they?

"Would then someone explain to me why Adam and Eve ate the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil,they suddently felt that being naked was evil and covered their private parts with Fig leaves if God had allready identified being naked (the state Adam was in at the end of the 6th day) as "very Good...i.e. perfection"? The fruit gave them God's knowledge of good and evil and since God did not consider nakedness evil,why would they?"
--Its not that being naked is 'evil' its that they 'realized' that they were naked, an 'embarassment', there is no need to be embarassed in perfection. After they ate the Fruit the became aware of that.-------------------

I've got to say thats quite a good theory you have there. You've put me in a situation where I have to side with you on this one. I can't think of why they would be embaressed in 'perfection'. Its a very good point.

"I've got to say thats quite a good theory you have there. You've put me in a situation where I have to side with you on this one. I can't think of why they would be embaressed in 'perfection'. Its a very good point."
--I applaud your agreement on the subject, its hard to get agreement on these kinds of biblical implications in here, I mostly get a 'move to another listed subject' kind of response (notice LudvanB didn't reply ). Willingness to admit when their statements and comments were not quite right or incorrect is very much appreciated and well regarded as the height of intelligent debates and arguments in the discussion. ------------------

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[This message has been edited by TrueCreation, 02-02-2002]

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
"I've got to say thats quite a good theory you have there. You've put me in a situation where I have to side with you on this one. I can't think of why they would be embaressed in 'perfection'. Its a very good point."
--I applaud your agreement on the subject, its hard to get agreement on these kinds of biblical implications in here, I mostly get a 'move to another listed subject' kind of response (notice LudvanB didn't reply ). Willingness to admit when their statements and comments were not quite right or incorrect is very much appreciated and well regarded as the height of intelligent debates and arguments in the discussion.

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Sorry to interrupt this mutual patting on the back gathering with the FACTS but here goes...There is no reason to feel embarassement at ones nakedness if thats all you have even known...alledged biblical perfection nonwistanding,there are scores of people who today feel no shame whatsoever at spending their lives naked in our very imperfect world so your argument is totally invalid. Modesty is NOT a natural instinct...its a learned behaviour born out of the habit of wearing cloths. There was no such habit being portrayed in the early Genesis and so,no more reason for Adam and Eve to feel shame or embarasement at their nakedness than there would have been for having two arms or hair on their head...all these things were were completely natural and normal to human beings and we have to be taught to feel self consious. I can tell you that if you had never worn cloths in your life,being naked would seem perfectly natural to you and you would not understand the concept of shame at being nubile. Now if you want to say the the action of eating the apple INVENTED shame in their minds,meaning creating this feeling out of NOTHING WHATSOEVER,then i would agree with you...but thats not what the story says AT ALL. It is clear that the story says that eating the apple ALERTED them to the "fact" that public nudity was somehow wrong...wrong according to who's criteria,thats an interesting question since as i explained,according to the Bible God never considered nudity in any form as being "wrong". All of this tells me that this part of the story is merely the autors projecting THEIR cultural bias against public nudity onto the characters of their story,which is not at all unusual BTW....writers often portrays their characters in ways which reflects their own culture and set of beliefs even though those cultural bias are not necessarely appropriate to the setting where the characters are made to evolve in their stories. (ex: a contemporary author writing a story about young knights in the middle ages who conducts and attitudes reflects not middle age but rather contemporary values as was the case in the movie A knight's tale).

That Croizat is correct in ALL particulars and that Provine's "physiological geneticist" was Neils Bohr's "aquosity" Mayr denies. The cost of selecting this to be aswered in selection would be more than that needed to maintain the research library sustaining the research. So probably philosophical just the same discussed tautology again.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TrueCreation:
[b]"To me, evolution is evolution. Micro-evolution is evolution over a short time period. Macro-evolution is evolution over a longer time period."
--I would have to say that here is your problem, Micro evolution isn't evolution over any period of time, neither is macro evolution, it is the amount of change, in which all we see today in our micro evolution is a devolving process, we are all slowely getting worse, loosing things, not gaining, to say that all of the dogs of the world have a common ancestor and it is a dog is revolving around ;micro evoution' or variation of kinds into species. The chuawa probley was not here 500 years ago, it is on the shallow end of the gene pool, any more change to that poor thing and it will mean bad news, and possibly extinction, as too is the cheetah. To say that the Dog and say iguana, or the horse are related, or as kent hovind puts it, related to the bananna, that is taking the leap of faith into macro-evolution.[/QUOTE]Then how do you explain the shared genes, especially pseudogenes, between species?

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"What I am trying to deal with here is the fact of evolution; that it happened whether by the mechanisms of the theory of evolution, or through devine creation and/or guidence."
--Then we have no argument, I would have to say that evolution happens, but not to the macro scale as you so believe.

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What is the mechanism that prevents many micro-changes from accumulating to a macro change?

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"My defination of evolution is that the nature of the populations of the earth has changed down through time. As time passes, some species go extinct, while other new species appear."
--Then there is no argument, you are right, 'species' change, and variate, all throughout time....about 6000 years. And some species go extinct and other new 'species' are produced by variation of their kind.

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Please explain what positive scientific evidence exists which indicates that the Earth is 6,000 years old.You will, at the very least, have to explain how EACH of the dozen or so dating methods we currently use are all severely flawed.Define what "kind" means in a scientific sense. IOW, how do I tell one "kind" from another? If you cannot do this, then it is a meaningless term, scientifically, so should not be used in a scientific debate.

Moose>>As I see it, the geologic record has clearly shown a progression of "kinds" as having appeared and gone extinct, as time has passed. This is the "fact" of evolution.<<Sure, organisms have appeared and gone extinct over time just like various models of automobiles and airplanes have. In fact, phrases like "the evolution of the automobile" or "the evolution of the airplane" etc. are commonly used to describe the history of automobile and airplane design and I don't think creationists object to this language, however, the origin of the different models of automobiles and airplanes involved separate creative acts, they didn't morph one into another. So the question is how do we know that the "evolution" of the basic body plans we see in the fossil record isn't more like "automobile evolution" than Darwinian evolution?

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[This message has been edited by Warren, 02-05-2002]

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Originally posted by Warren:
Moose>>As I see it, the geologic record has clearly shown a progression of "kinds" as having appeared and gone extinct, as time has passed. This is the "fact" of evolution.<<

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Sure, organisms have appeared and gone extinct over time just like various models of automobiles and airplanes have. In fact, phrases like "the evolution of the automobile" or "the evolution of the airplane" etc. are commonly used to describe the history of automobile and airplane design and I don't think creationists object to this language, however, the origin of the different models of automobiles and airplanes involved separate creative acts, they didn't morph one into another. So the question is how do we know that the "evolution" of the basic body plans we see in the fossil record isn't more like "automobile evolution" than Darwinian evolution?

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[This message has been edited by Warren, 02-05-2002]

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Well,since neither cars nor planes are living organism,i dont see how they can be used as a counter point to darwinian evolution.

Originally posted by LudvanB:
"Well,since neither cars nor planes are living organism, I dont see how they can be used as a counter point to darwinian evolution."My point is simply that a history of creation and a history of evolution would produce a similar pattern, so the pattern in and of itself isn't evidence for evolution.

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Originally posted by Percipient:
I thought Creationists didn't have a problem with evolution per se, just with evolution between kinds. Within this group there may be two sub-categories, one holding that change within a kind draws only upon variation already present within the genome, the other accepting the additional possibility of mutation.
--Percy

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Creationists have a problem with evolution. There is no real difference between so called 'micro' and 'macro' evolution - the terms were invented by creationists when the evolution for 'micro' evolution got so overwhelming that even they couldn't come at denying it any longer. But, lo and behold, by defining a difference that doesn't exist, they can still claim to not believe in evolution - meaning 'macro' evolution. This, of course, cannot be witnessed, unlike 'micro' evolution - the time scales involved are way beyond our ability to see. But make no mistake - 'macro' evolution is merely lots of bits of 'micro' evolution. There is no qualitative difference.Given that mutation is inevitable, evolution is statistically possible (easily demonstrable to anyone with a grasp of statistics). Once it is possible, it is also possible that it works across species, until and unless someone shows some 'inter-species' barrier that prevents it. Nobody has ever been able to do so. Yet creationists will deny its possibility.But don't forget, creationists represent very much a minority among the religious, even among christians. Creationism is virtually exclusively found among right-wing american christians. All around the world, the religious (including christians) believe in their god and evolution simultaneously. They realise that to refuse to believe in evolution would be like refusing to believe in gravity - "There's no such thing as gravity - it's just that God holds us all down to the earth!". We should consider ourselves lucky - lucky that the majority of christians do not follow creationism, and lucky that those who do follow it do not have sufficient power to repress scientific truth. Once upon a time, they did. Remember Galileo? If many creationists had their way, it'd happen all over again. It's the responsibility of rational people (christian, atheist, muslim or whatever) all over the world to ensure that people with religious beliefs and the desire to impose them upon others do NOT get the control they would like (like the creationists constantly chasing political office in the US). A vote against a creationist is a vote for truth, for science, for freedom.

[QUOTE][b]My point is simply that a history of creation and a history of evolution would produce a similar pattern, so the pattern in and of itself isn't evidence for evolution.[/QUOTE][/b]A history of Creation, in which systems were modified from animal states to human forms is philosophically indistinguishable from evolution, in fact, that is theistic evolution.If it looks like a chimp, and has the DNA of a chimp, chances are, it's either a chimp or a modified chimp.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by toff:
A vote against a creationist is a vote for truth, for science, for freedom.[/B][/QUOTE]Alright buddy, you fight the power! Stop those evil Creation scientists!

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Originally posted by Cobra_snake:
Alright buddy, you fight the power! Stop those evil Creation scientists!

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Don't worry, I, and millions like me, DO view people who would impose their beliefs upon others as evil, and do view those who would suppress knowledge because they don't like it as evil, and are doing our best to stop creationists (one group which contains such people) from gaining the power to do so.

Moose>>Elsewhere I have pointed out that the 1)Fact of evolution, and 2)Theory of evolution are two seperate things.What I am trying to deal with here is the fact of evolution; that it happened whether by the mechanisms of the theory of evolution, or through devine creation and/or guidence.My defination of evolution is that the nature of the populations of the earth has changed down through time. As time passes, some species go extinct, while other new species appear.<<Then everyone is an evolutionist! Evolution that merely refers to change over time isn't controversial. In fact, when evolution is defined this way it can even refer to a downhill, information losing process. Thus, insects losing the ability to fly and certain cave dwelling fish losing their eyesight over time is called evolution. However, the evolution that is being challenged is the kind of evolution that can create complex organs and structures like eyes, wings and brains. This requires an uphill, information-adding process.Now, the kind of evolution that we can actually observe happening today is the kind that can cause the ratio of dark to light peppered moths in a population to vary, it can cause insects to become resistant to poisons that use to kill them, it can cause bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics, but can we extrapolate from this data that complex biological structures and organs like eyes, wings and brains can be created from this same process if we give it enough time?Here is what is wrong with that hypothesis. The kind of changes we observe occurring in organisms today do not involve the creation of new information. Natural selection is not an author, it plays the role of a critic. Changes in organisms are due the reshuffling, tweaking and/or loss of information already residing in the genome. On the other hand, the origination of eyes, wings and brains requires the input of massive amounts of new information, information that at one time never existed in any living thing on earth.That selection and inheritance with modification together account for the full diversity of life--is an inflated view of the Darwinian mechanism. As a mechanism for conserving, adapting, and honing already existing biological structures, the Darwinian mechanism is ideally suited. But as a mechanism for creating complex biological structures and organs, it utterly lacks the informational resources.Bill Gates has likened the encoded information in DNA to a software code. There is no evidence that random mutations and selection can "write" genetic programs. Randomness in language is the enemy of order, a way of annihilating meaning. And not only in language, but in any language-like system including computer programs. Making changes randomly on computer programs will cause them to jam.Creationists do not assert that organisms are so inflexible in form that they cannot vary in response to environmental changes. In fact, persons that believe in the flood of Noah's day accept that the large number of species that exist today sprang from a much smaller number of species that were carried on Noah's ark. This kind of change is called speciation. Most creation scientists accept a rate of speciation that is much faster than is commonly accepted by mainstream evolutionists. Add to that the fact that mainstream evolutionists refer to speciation as macro-evolution and you could say that young earth creationists are macro-evolutionists! That's how convoluted this debate can get.The fundamental issue in dispute between creationists and scientific materialists is not whether evolution occurs, but whether unintelligent material processes created all the complex genetic information needed to turn microbes into magpies, maple trees and musicians. Materialistic evolutionary theory hasn't explained the origin of the most important element in life, information.

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[This message has been edited by Warren, 02-08-2002]